The Philosophy of One Piece

One Piece is like an onion. It has layers and makes me cry

I just fucking love your choice to only use manga panels to illustrate your points. I always found the manga to have a more beautiful, mysterious and special atmosphere.

World government: totalitarian divine command theory Pirates in general: ethical egoism Doflamingo: meta-ethical nihilism Robin: act utilitarianism Luffy: situational ethics Sanji: romanticism Zoro: stoicism / bushido Nami: laissez-faire capitalism

This dude is criminally underrated in this community. Deserves WAY more subs. The depth he goes into for videos, the thought behind his ideas, the way he articulates those ideas....bravo my man. Just know that those of us here appreciate the work you do.

I've always liked how there's a sort of id-ego-superego dynamic between the bad pirates, good pirates, and the world government. Rather than telling a story about one side versus the other, the Straw Hats are placed in the middle and are forced to contend with both extremes. What I enjoy about these types of stories is that they emphasize the importance of being balanced.

One Piece has very strong anarchist and revolutionary themes, which is part of the reason why I love it so much. It well and truly embraces the idea of freedom

The brilliance of the philosophy of OP is rather than attack several ideas at once, it takes freedom as its base and expands on it as much as possible while maintaining its core. Its simple turned complex rather than complex trying to be simplified. Even the art style mimics this method where overly simplistic art/biomes are made complex the further into the story we get which was inevitable, but helps tell the beautiful story that is One Piece. Appreciate your work bro.

In other words, both sides can be bad. The Strawhats are basically chaotic neutral forces, who are willing to do heroics because of the relationships they form with the oppressed. In fact, it's often the supporting characters who spout out the big morals instead of the main characters.

You really are on a whole league of your own within the One Piece community. Splendid job Morj!

One Piece is so saturated with poorly-constructed theories that people no longer take analytical videos like these seriously, hence the lack of analysis videos for One Piece. It's honestly disheartening and it's a shame you're experiencing the effect of this. Your video deserves MUCH MORE views. One Piece also deserves more dissecting because it does the best in what it does in the shonen category. Only one that comes close is HxH

If a song writer, Bob Dylan, could win Nobel prize for literature. Oda should get one too!

Oh! It's Here! It's about time too. You surpassed my expectations on this one Morj. This really came out nice.

I recommend you to read a book called "The many-headed hydra", it's a social History book about pirates, I'm 1000% sure Oda has read it before writing One Piece. The thing I love the most about OP is how it takes a lot from our world's history and translates it into another oversized version of it. One Piece's morals are complex because so are our world's, and if you read that book you'll see that a lot of piracy was exactly how it is depicted in it. One Piece is an AMAZING source for social history and moral philosophy too, which is the main reason I absolutely adore it. Oda is hands down the best world builder and character builder in manga history, and one of the greatest in fiction in general. I'm yet to find a better constructed villain than Doflamingo in any piece of fiction tbh.

A literary work that will stand the test of time and become a classic is one that explores the fundamental duality of chaos and order. One Piece is truly a literary masterpiece that transcend borders and culture. Thanks Mr. Morj for making these videos.

I really do admire One Piece for its creative use of the hierarchical power structures. I always felt that it was very self-aware in slapping the generic "goodguy" "badguy" labels on pirates and marines alike, but it addresses the illusion of those power hierarchies being just surprisingly early (with Coby and Luffy's meeting, as you stated). The reason I believe it is an excellent world-building tool is because not only does the reader get to, both consciously and unconsciously, contemplate who is in doing the "right" thing in the current situation and vice versa, but it is made extremely easy to follow through the reflections of those moral dilemmas in the Straw Hats and other major characters. Good video.

It really makes me mad when people talk about One Piece as "typical shonen". By "people", I mostly mean creators who cover anime, but don't mainly talk about OP, and general anime fandom. They act as if One Piece is just this another mainstream shonen series, and when they say "shonen", they mean: - dumb, - without depth - literally evey conflict is solved by "POwEr oF fRenDsHip" (which as we all know, is a bad, and a "sHoNeN cLIcHe" , which makes it double bad) - mindless entertaiment made for, and enjoyed by the normies, - it's "tropes" need to be "dEcOnStRucTeD" in order to be worthy of analysis Mathwiz made an excellent video, talking about how people tend to misrepresnt, and looked down upon this genre (mostly in the context of Bleach). Anyway, as always: You are the best OP youtber out there, Mr Morj-senpai!

First I saw the title, and I was like "yessss", and then I saw "Mr Morj", and I was like "OMG YES this is gonna be the best thing ever!!!!"

The best aspect of One Piece´s take on Good vs Evil is that it isn´t really Pirates vs Marines. It is freedom vs oppression. And oppression can be represented by both pirates and marines.

This is why One Piece is amazing, your analysis is fantastic

Aw man, this was amazing. I mean, One Piece is my all time favorite manga and I'm a student in political philosophy, so, like, your video is pretty much everything I love. And, consequently, I have wayyy too much to say about it, but I'll try to keep it short (I mean, as short as I can, because I probably could write a whole book about this). So, first, let's just say that this conflict between absolute authority and pure anarchy has basically been the central problem of political philosophy since the beginning of human history, from Plato to Marx to Foucault and, like, just everyone else. It's just THE question that, if we were able to answer, then we would probably be able to live happily ever after. And you're right, this question is central in OP, and the manga gives no clear answer, which is one of the things that make it pretty amazing. But I think I don't fully agree with you on one point, that is the idea that there is an anarchist "pirates' mentality" which would be like "do whatever you want". I mean, I totally get where you come from and I don't even think you're wrong, but at the same time I think that it is a mistake to consider Luffy's and Blackbeard's ideologies as belonging to the same kind of ideologies. Of course they are very much alike and of course both of them are very closely linked to the concept of freedom, but still, I believe they differ in very very significant ways. And it actually ties in to the concept of "anarchy", which actually has pretty different meanings whether you use it in common language or in political philosophy or politcal science. It's kind of hard to say that the Strawhats are fundamentally anarchists, since they have a leader, Luffy, which is really contradictory with anarchist principles. You could say they are liberals, in the political sense of the term (they value freedom above all else), but it's not exactly true either because they are also egalitarian, they want everyone to have the same freedom and despise any form of unjustfied hierarchy (which would be closer to anarchism). In some aspects they are also close to libertarianism but, once again, not entirely, because they recognize and fight systematic oppression like racism... I believe Blackbeard's ideology can be defined as libertarian, "do whatever the fuck you want to do", but libertarianism is not anarchism, just as Luffy is presented as fundamentally opposed to Blackbeard, because yes, he wants to be able to do whatever he wants to do, but he also wants everyone else to have that liberty, which is in fact a huge difference between both, and a huge difference between anarchism and libertarianism (and yeah as I've already said it would be wrong to label Luffy and his crew as pure anarchists, but that's also precisely what makes them great, you just can't label them, they are in this weird in-between that you just cannot precisely define with pre-existing concepts). So, to me, Luffy and his crew are closer to anarchism than to any other ideology, but 1) their anarchism can absolutely not be reduced to the idea that "you can just do anything you want' (which is the case of anarchism as a philosophy in general I believe) and, 2) some aspects of their philosophy are just plainly in contradiction to any kind of anarchism. And the last thing I'd like to mention is your sentiment about the idea that finding a solution to all this is just a utopia. I mean, maybe it is, I'm not saying it's not, I just firmly believe that trying to build and understand utopias is actually an important and valuable work, which can in fact create a lot of great stuff. In some way it's the same problem I have with the common use of the word "anarchism": it's not because it seems impossible that it is, because the world has already transformed numerous times in ways that seemed not only impossible but just completely unthinkable in the past. (Okay, this was way too long, but, well, I've tried my best)